Syllabus for English 327:
Frankenstein's Family:
The Godwins and the Shelleys (Fall 2024)

• ChatGPT (and Its Relatives) and College Writing: A Quick Guide for Students (PDF)

First day: class overview and Special Collections conversation about objects from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Quick first assignments by the end of today: 1) Put a paragraph of self-introduction in the class "Self-Introductions" Document, and 2) As the first entry in your Blog of Interest, describe one thing you'd like to work on or practice in your writing for this class.

• Collection of responses to the French Revolution (Canvas files): Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, Helen Maria Williams

Blogs of Interest: Group 1 does full blog posts, and everyone else does quotations-only posts.

• Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Wollstonecraft's introduction and chapters 1-4 (Canvas files)
• Early reviews of the Vindication (Canvas files, at the end of the Vindication PDF)
  • Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature: brief biography of Mary Wollstonecraft

Blogs of Interest: Group 2 does full blog posts, and everyone else does quotations-only posts.

• Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary: A Fiction

Blogs of Interest: Group 3 does full blog posts, and everyone else does quotations-only posts.

• Mary Wollstonecraft, The Wrongs of Woman: Or, Maria

Blogs of Interest: Group 1 does full blog posts, and everyone else does quotations-only posts.

• Mary Poovey, "Mary Wollstonecraft: The Gender of Genres in Late Eighteenth-Century England" (Canvas files)
• Kirstin R. Wilcox, "Vindicating Paradoxes: Mary Wollstonecraft's 'Woman'" (Canvas files)

Blogs of Interest: Group 2 does full blog posts, and everyone else does quotations-only posts.

• William Godwin, from An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on Morals and Happiness (Canvas files)
  • Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature: brief biography of William Godwin

Blogs of Interest: Group 3 does full blog posts, and everyone else does quotations-only posts.

• William Godwin, Things As They Are; Or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams, Volume I

Blogs of Interest: Group 1 does full blog posts, and everyone else does quotations-only posts.

• Godwin, Caleb Williams, Volume II

Blogs of Interest: Group 2 does full blog posts, and everyone else does quotations-only posts.

• Godwin, Caleb Williams, Volume III

Blogs of Interest: Group 3 does full blog posts, and everyone else does quotations-only posts.

• Godwin, Caleb Williams, all appendices in the Penguin edition
• Jon Klancher, "Godwin and the Genre Reformers: Necessity and Contingency in Romantic Narrative Theory" (Canvas files)

Blogs of Interest: Group 1 does full blog posts, and everyone else does quotations-only posts.

• Erik Simpson, Quick Guide to Chicago NB Style
• Jonathan H. Grossman, "Caleb Williams and the Novel's Forensic Form" (Canvas files)
• Kristina Straub, from Domestic Affairs: Intimacy, Eroticism, and Violence between Servants and Masters in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Canvas files)

Blogs of Interest: Group 2 does full blog posts, and everyone else does quotations-only posts.

• Erik Simpson, An Approach to Finding Secondary Sources for a Research Paper in English

Your main assignment for today is to put your paper prospectus into your blog of interest before class time. We will go over the handout linked above in class, but you are also welcome to look at it in advance.

This week, in lieu of meeting as a class, we will have individual conferences to check in on how you're doing and to discuss your papers-in-progress.

This week, in lieu of meeting as a class, we will have individual conferences to check in on how you're doing and to discuss your papers-in-progress.

• Percy Bysshe Shelley, "A Defence of Poetry"
• Shelley, poems: "Ozymandias," "England in 1819," "To a Skylark," "Ode to Liberty," and "Ode to the West Wind"
  • Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature: brief biography of Percy Bysshe Shelley

Blogs of Interest: Group 3 does full blog posts, and everyone else does quotations-only posts.

• Shelley, "A Philosophical View of Reform" (textbook) and "A Vindication of Natural Diet" (handout)

Blogs of Interest: Group 1 does full blog posts, and everyone else does quotations-only posts.

• Christopher Hitt, "‘A Sword of Lightning’: Shelley's ‘Ode to Liberty’ and the Politics of Despair" (Canvas files)
• Timothy Morton, "Joseph Ritson, Percy Shelley, and the Making of Romantic Vegetarianism" (Canvas files)

Blogs of Interest: Group 2 does full blog posts, and everyone else does quotations-only posts.

• Mary Shelley, Matilda
  • Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature: brief biography of Mary Shelley

Blogs of Interest: Group 3 does full blog posts, and everyone else does quotations-only posts.

• Pamela Clemit, "The Legacies of Godwin and Wollstonecraft" (which includes some anticipatory Frankenstein material as well as a reading of Matilda) (Canvas files)
• Charles Robinson, "Mathilda as Dramatic Actress" (Canvas files)

Blogs of Interest: Group 1 does full blog posts, and everyone else does quotations-only posts.

Your main assignment for today is to put your paper prospectus into your blog of interest. This time around, I will provide written feedback on the prospectus. In class, we will do a workshop in preparation for the annotated bibliography assignment.

• Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus, Preface and Volume I

Blogs of Interest: Group 2 does full blog posts, and everyone else does quotations-only posts.

In place of class, we will have check-in conferences to talk about your annotated bibliographies and how you're doing more generally.

Annotated bibliography due by email attachment by 9:00 p.m.

• Shelley, Frankenstein, Volume II

Blogs of Interest: Group 3 does full blog posts, and everyone else does quotations-only posts.

• Shelley, Frankenstein, Volume III

Blogs of Interest: Group 1 does full blog posts, and everyone else does quotations-only posts.

• Maureen McLane, "Literate species: populations, 'humanities,' and the specific failure of literature in Frankenstein" (Canvas files)
• Richard Sha, "Volta's Battery, Animal Electricity, and Frankenstein" (Canvas files)

Blogs of Interest: Group 2 does full blog posts, and everyone else does quotations-only posts.

By class time, add to your Blog of Interest a) a draft opening paragraph of your paper and b) whatever additional notes you'd like to share about how the paper might develop after that. During class, you will talk about these draft paragraphs and notes in your groups.

Last day of class: we gather to wrap up the semester and build an animatronic float for the big class parade.

Progress report due by email by 9:00 p.m.